Technology Fueling Construction Recovery

Yesterday I had the pleasure of listening to a presentation about the economy and what the future holds. It was presented by Dr. Jeff Dietrich, a senior analyst for the Institute for Trend Research (ITR). ITR provides economic data to help companies navigate business cycles. In addition to the presentation, I’ve been subscribing to the ITR reports for about 5 years and I have always found them pretty accurate.

They are expecting moderate growth for the next 3 years including construction in several areas. I was encouraged by their economic forecast, for two reasons. First, it’s not all “doom and gloom” like I hear in the media way too often. Second, he reinforced that as the economy recovers, corporations, institutions and governments are turning to technology to increase their capacity to do additional work.
Dr. Dietrich did not talk specifically about construction management software. But, his trend signals growth in healthcare, education and government construction. And technology is seen as a key component of the strategy to get the increased work done. Essentially, companies and governments are “doing more with less” or “more with the same” resources by implementing software.
Of course, that’s music to my ears. It’s also why, during one of the worst recessions in history, my company, e-Builder has seen 8 straight quarters of record growth. Our construction project management software is exactly the kind of technology that enables organizations to improve productivity. We see numerous examples within our user base to support this macroeconomic trend.
It also makes me happy to see an increase in construction productivity. Long term, we need to increase productivity and decrease the cost associated with capital project construction. If we can lower the cost of construction, even by 1%, we can free up Billions of dollars for other higher (in my opinion) priorities – like teacher salaries and healthcare research.